That Music List

Saturday, 19 September 2026

LIST 272 – 19/09/2026

(Coup Dur - Mary Street Live, Sheffield 11/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

This week's List was always going to have a Francophone start to it, just not the one I was anticipating, following news of the sad passing of Catherine Ringer a few days back. Reports generally indicate that she was taken quickly by an aggressive cancer at 68, which is no age.

Tributes have been generous and in no short supply, not least from Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, periodic collaborators with either Catherine solo (as recently as 2022) or with her and the late Fred Chichin's pioneering pop duo Les Rita Mitsouko. "Artiste incomparable, amie incomparable. Catherine, tu nous manqueras. Bisous de tes amis Russell et Ron", they write. Nous aussi.

In including Marcia Baïla in List #257 (q.v.), I wrote, "Because sometimes it's possible to have a monster hit at home with a five and a half-minute long amalgam of squelchy electro-pop, chanson and bossa nova. As announcements of statements of intent go, this debut single from 1984 took some licking".

Amid all of the musical inventiveness, that force of nature voice was always front and centre. Powerful, characterful, emotive. Again, as I mused earlier in the year, perhaps the duo's first producer Conny Plank saw something of the Dietrich about Catherine, harking back to his own formative years as the diva's soundman.

Needless to say, a tribute to Catherine will appear on these pages at some point in the coming weeks.

And what of the French (and Belgians) I was expecting to write about first this week? Those of us who say yeah to a bit of yé-yé duly filled our boots in Sheffield last Friday, enjoying what was just the second ever British gig for Coup Dur.

Theirs is very much not a mere pastiche of that sixties sound, however. Smart, confident, melodic, witty, and inflected with more contemporary indiepop touches on occasion. It's additionally to the late 1970s they turned for cover versions rather than earlier, giving buoyant renditions of both Devo's Uncontrollable Urge (another originally Conny Plank-produced track mentioned this week, coincidence fans) and Part Time Punks by Television Personalities.

Coup Dur's debut 10" released in May was cheekily entitled The English Want... Coup Dur, and tonight they very definitely did.

Big thanks as always to Elodie, Chris and Madeline for putting on such splendid entertainment, and to Nick Godfrey of Precious Recordings for putting out the headliners' stuff and encouraging them over here in the first place. Given Nick's and my shared background of sometimes working for the Racing Post, I did wonder whether he might have fancied paring a trip up to see Coup Dur with one to the St Leger at Doncaster the day after. He'd have seen history being made, too. Either way, I still owe you a pint from Indietracks 2019, kind sir.

***

(Precious Metals - Mary Street Live, Sheffield 11/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

Coup Dur's support act belatedly brings us on to the selections for this week's List. The festive costumes from the last time I'd seen Precious Metals five days before Xmas were inevitably missing, but all of the wide-eyed vim of their repertoire was still present and correct - and indeed landed with me even better this time, thanks in part to Mary Street Live's clearer PA system and acoustics.

This was a great run through tracks old and new, from those whose jangles and dual female harmonies brought to mind Talulah Gosh to the more crunching tones and riffs of recent track Pigeon, included this week.

It was also grand to witness the deployment of an Omnichord on stage, almost certainly the first I've seen since Cris Romero of The Royal Landscaping Society accompanied himself entirely on one for an Indietracks tent session back in 2015. More Omnichords in pop, please. They're quirky and fun.

(Cris Romero of The Royal Landscaping Society at the Omnichord - Indietracks festival, 25/07/2015. Pictures is author's own)

In addition to helping putting on the bands, Madeline went the extra yard and supplied a tremendous (mostly) Francophone pop playlist on Spotify by way of further recommended listening. I'm certainly gorging myself on it at the moment.

One of just two tracks on there that I'd had earmarked to appear in the Fabriqué en France feature on That Music List before long anyway, Main dans la main is top-notch electropop fun from Elli et Jacno, mainstays of seminal French punk band The Stinky Toys previously.

Jacno, or Denis Quilliard to his mum, also released a smattering of tremendous instrumental albums, some not entirely dissimilar to this single but rawer in execution and on occasion veering into similar territory to earlyish Durutti Column. They're well worth your time also.

Fun fact #1. A dedicated smoker, Denis's stagename of Jacno was taken from the graphic artist who drew the Gallic helmet logo of Gauloises cigarettes.

***

Of all of the new or recent tracks included this week, I don't think any are newer or more recent than The Rabbit, the a-side of a single released last Friday which signifies the return of Nat Johnson & The Figureheads.

There's not been much recorded output from Nat since her relocation to the north east a while back, and the logistics of members spread far and wide are, by her own admission, likely to put paid to any hopes of full band gigs in support of these new tracks.

Even so, it's a joy to have Nat back, that clear voice and impeccable songcraft all as present and correct as before; and I'll never not be kindly disposed towards Nat's work following her temporarily reassembled Monkey Swallows The Universe's delivering of one of the single most poignant sets I ever saw.

(Nat Johnson pictured during the last ever Monkey Swallows the Universe performance - Indietracks festival, 30/07/2017. Picture is author's own)

Indietracks, 2017. Already known in advance to be the final final MSTU gig - no further reunions thereafter. Emotional enough already, but their playing a cover of a song by Slow Down Tallahassee, in memory of that band's late and much missed Claire Turley, had the Sheffield indiepop contingent in the crowd in tears. Claire's widower Ian was present among them. Heart-rending scenes and a generous tribute from and to equally generous performers.

Fun fact #2. One thing connecting the Figureheads and the subsequent choice on the List from early-1980s post-punks I'm So Hollow is that they each feature a former Sheffield University Library colleague of mine, Chris Loftus and Jane Antcliff respectively. There are more besides them still working here whilst also recording and playing. It's going to get to the stage that I'm going to need to embark on a however short lived music career before I retire, just so as not to let the side down. I play a mean comb and paper.

Saturday, 12 September 2026

LIST 271 - 12/09/2026

(The Burgers - Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield 06/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

Depending on when you read this (and the analytics suggest my posts gain most visits midweek), I'll hopefully have enjoyed seeing either French-Belgian combo Coup Dur at 95 Mary Street in Sheffield, or else Spratleys and Panixphere at the Brudenell in Leeds.

Ideally both, though three gigs in a week might be a bit of a liberty, if not an outright dereliction of familial duty. Naughty daddy.

The photos shared above come from the first of those three gigs in a week, the four-band feature at Sidney & Matilda last Sunday which I trailed on these pages a short while before. And yes, that is a puppet drummer you can see.

Believe it or not, Sunday wasn't the first time I'd seen a punk-pop band from the other side of the world with a percussionist made of cloth.

However, whereas Yumi Yumi's "drummer" Tom was a teddy bear unavailingly tasked with getting the drum machine he was sitting on to work (I wished I'd photographed it at the time), Drummy Burger from Beijing-via-Glasgow headline act The Burgers actually moved his arms along broadly in time to the music.

I was reminded of those sunglasses-wearing, guitar-wielding novelty flowers from years ago, only in puppet form and with one leg missing, apparently stolen. Having shown them some footage of the gig, my kids want to set up a charity fundraiser to buy Drummy a new leg. They're all heart.

The Burgers, the only act of the quartet new to me, were a great find, energetic, righteous, and evidently not above baiting Joe Strummer. A fun finish to a top evening, one earlier graced with a typically winsome/charming/hilarious half hour or so with All Ashore! (do write in if you can answer for them the mystery of why nits never travel from your head to your pubes) and the terrific, inventive pounding of Duck.

The last-named haven't appeared on this blog half enough, all things considered - and not since the first List back from its hiatus (q.v. List #237). Further fresh output is apparently imminent, and the set indeed closed with a newie, having previously taken in a touching cover of Dolly Parton's The Bargain Store.

For now, it's a pleasure to include 2020 track New Super Power, a defiant railing against society's attempts to make women of a certain age to all intents and purposes invisible, and also against the notion that a lurch to the ideological right is inevitable once hitting that sort of age. Cue much clapping in time and chanting back of "no I won't go" to this one by all of us present, who indeed aren't going anywhere.

(Duck - Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield 06/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

***

Getting to the venue in time to see Pink Opaque play again would have rendered it a yet more fabulous evening - my apologies, Danielle and Pete.

I still got to chat with them both variously about football, Only Connect (I'm not sure how many of this year's intake of teams would trouble Danielle's mighty Francophiles), Grimbarian-themed space missions, Skep Wax Records and how-the-hell-are-our-kids-so-old-now, however, so it's all good.

Some of that chat with Pete concentrated on their latest solo incarnation Mariner 9, a name surely not arrived at by accident given Pete's Grimsby roots, and an electronic project blessed with joyous washes of Jean-Michel Jarre style synths and wide-eyed optimism, as evident in the track I've included this week.

Pete and Danielle's stance on AI use in music is of course a matter of record also, either or both of the duo having taken aim in such as the Pink Opaque track Bringing Back the Humans and a number of social media posts. It hardly needs stating, therefore, that We Love You from the Moon similarly contains no traces whatsoever of anything arrived at via a large language model, generative chatbot or similar. No way, no how.

Compare and contrast with one Jovanka van Wilsdorf, who as one half of turn of the century German duo Quarks created four studio albums of warm, inventive electropop of a kind not a million miles removed from what I see and hear some of my Sheffield friends producing to the present day.

However, in researching Quarks members' subsequent history ahead of this week's inclusion of the engaging, twitchy Schneider TM remix of Fallen, I discovered that Jovanka has since picked up the AI baton and run further with it than most.

"A creative AI consultant, speaker and initiator specializing in social robotics", her website notes, going on to highlight variously her work as musical director of concerts performed by an AI-driven robot; as the co-creator of DIANA, the self-claimed first ever AI Song Contest; as a prolific public speaker and lecturer on AI songwriting and production; and so on.

The subtitles of some of her speeches - muse and monster; between hype and horror; good bot, bad bot - suggest that Jovanka isn't necessarily indifferent to the wider ethical concerns of AI, and her attempts to create and consolidate a "female AI" are broadly compatible with her other initiatives such as the creation of a Female* Producer Prize in conjunction with Music Women* Germany (note, by the way, the asterisks - the Gendersternchen or "gender star" used in Germany to signify gender inclusivity, thus opening up this award to trans women also).

Not wholly unimpressive when written down like that, and for the greater part certainly a more virtuous, empowering use of AI than draining dry another reservoir just to produce a pub quiz poster or picture of present day you with a 1980s hairdo.

Even so, is this music? Ought it count as such? Really and truly?

***

Very much not created with AI - and arguably too idiosyncratic and multifaceted for AI to have been able to build it even had the likes of Suno been a thing way back in 1989 - is this week's choice of A Loved Album, This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! by Pop Will Eat Itself.

One member of my trio of all-time favourite albums, alongside Skywriting by The Field Mice (q.v. List #238) and one other that'll feature on these pages before the year's out, it almost singlehandedly blew away my ignorant belief of hitherto that studio albums were incapable of sustaining the excitement and interest of either a 7" single (and it was 7" singles back then) or a well put-together compilation.

It was described on release as more of a sound collage than an album by the likes of Trouser Press, and the use of short, linking pieces to maintain a continuous flow of sound - a technique adapted from the previous year's touring mates Public Enemy - only served to harden that impression (whilst also making jabbing down the pause button at the precise split second when making mixtapes for mates that bit trickier).

It was, and remains, an album designed to grab your attention from the word go, and hold it unrelentingly.

For a work so heavily indebted to, and continuously knowingly referencing, assorted sci-fi films, comics, books, musicians and so on, it nevertheless maintains a generous, inclusive feel throughout. If you possess a sound working knowledge of the output of, say, Alan Moore, Isaac Asimov, Mantronix, Gilbert Shelton, Rod Serling or The Jungle Brothers, here is a band who speaks your language and proves the point over an entire album. If you don't (and I don't), you're more than welcome to enjoy the thrills and innovations as an equal anyway.

Can U Dig It? (the single with which they finally cracked the UK top 40) and Wise Up! Sucker have long since featured in Lists, and with so many other highlights on This Is the Day... there was zero temptation on my part to repeat either. I'm surprised I've let you go this long without any iteration of Def Con One, mind, and that matter is rectified here alongside three other inclusions.

(With the release of This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!, so began years of me drawing the various Designers Republic PWEI robots, monsters, spacemen, etc. all over virtually every single school book or folder - doubtless to the exasperation or befuddlement of the teachers and lecturers who had to handle them. This example is from off of an A-Level maths folder in 1992, hence the Bulletproof! lyrical quote. I've loads more somewhere in the loft).

***

By the time This Is the Day... was released in early 1989, a thrash band by the name of Panixphere had already been in a fitful existence for almost six years.

Originally conceived as a live-only entity by Bic Hayes, later of Cardiacs, Levitation and Dark Star, it's taken the small matter of 43 years for the stars to align sufficiently for Panixphere - nowadays coalesced into a trio of Bic and Cardiacs/Ad Nauseam buddies Jon Poole and Bob Leith - to put out their debut album.

Hence, at last, Gods and Zeros, released in July and enjoyed by me continuously since.

That Panixphere has gone through sustained periods of inertia over the past four decades is putting it mildly. The band had previously been at its most active in the early 1990s, with Bic then flanked by none other than Tim Smith himself and the soon-to-be Cardiacs duo of Poole and Leith. After which, not terribly much happened in the life of this act for around a quarter of a century, but plenty in the lives of the other associated bands mentioned.

Three tracks written by Jon in this period (including Angleworm Angel, available on Gods and Zeros under its original title of Perfic) ended up in some form or other on Cardiacs' Sing to God magnum opus in 1996. More Money Than God, meanwhile, was written by Tim at the same time as Perfic, but has never appeared on record in any form, until now. It's a genuine pleasure to include it here this week.

Having had almost half a lifetime to keep the diary clear, by the way, will all three current Panixpherians be present for their dates alongside Spratleys this month? Alas, no - Jon's gone off touring with Adam Ant...

Blimey I can go on.

Had we better just move on to the other highlights? You may also like:

New or recent fare from Windy & Carl Meet Optigan Conservatory, Kiwi Jr (bringing to mind the same Rockford Files theme Minimoog stylings of such as Boy Genius's Old New England), SILVERWINGKILLER and four-plus minutes of pure, anti-Trump invective from Massive Attack & Tom Waits (or Sexy Tom Waits, as you'll recall The Yummy Fur referring to him as).

Far from the only example of cheery music meets heavy subject matter from the 1980s, as Italo Disco duo Righeira discuss the dropping of the atomic bomb.

The sole UK top 40 hit for rockers-turned-new-wavers After The Fire, though an English language cover of Falco's Der Kommissar would subsequently do better still for them in the US. The loon you can see on drums is one Ivor Twidell (later Iva Twydell), soon to leave on an ultimately unavailing attempt to make a greater breakthrough as a solo frontperson. Where is he now, one wonders.

Carl Puttnam of Cud still looking ridiculously young in the promo for 1990's Magic, already their tenth single and the final one before the leap to a major label and a degree of chart stardom. Seeing them live at the Leadmill in Sheffield as part of their 2012 "Jubilee" tour was one of Linda's and my earliest date nights out; the band were great, certain lairy misogynistic elements of their fanbase, not so much.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 10/09/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

KIM DEAL - Nobody Loves You More (2024)

COMET GAIN - You Can Hide Your Love Forever (2001)

WINDY & CARL MEET OPTIGAN CONSERVATORY - Conductor (2026)

THE RAPTURE - Get Myself Into It (2006)

KNEECAP - Parful (2024)

EUROTASTIC
RIGHEIRA – Vamos a la Playa (1985)

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
CUD - Magic (1990)

MASSIVE ATTACK & TOM WAITS - Boots on the Ground (2026)

AFTER THE FIRE - One Rule for You (1979)

DUCK - New Super Power (2020)

(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

SNUGGLE - Dust (2025)

READERS WIFES - Bitch at the Brits (2003)

SCIENTISTROCK
MARINER 9 - We Love You from the Moon (2026)

A LOVED ALBUM: Pop Will Eat Itself - This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! (1989)
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - Def Con One
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - Inject Me

KIWI Jr - World Like Polly (2026)

HIGHSPIRE - Slowbeat (2002)

THE RESEARCH - The Hard Times (2005)

MANASSEH - Skenga (1999)

SILVERWINGKILLER - Shang Film (2026)

A TANGLE OF JANGLE
THE STARLETS - Rocking in a Shy Way (2001)
THE FEELIES - Let’s Go (1986)
TALLY HO! ft ROSE MELBERG - I Never Will Marry (2012)

(No video for the Tally Ho! track. Please click on this Bandcamp link)

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
QUARKS - Fallen (Werden wir alle in Grossen Spiralen aus dem Himmel gespuckt Mix) (Schneider Tm Mix) (2000)

GRAEME QUINTON-JONES - Humoresque (1968/2013)

PANIXPHERE - More Money Than God (2026)

(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

RED HOUSE PAINTERS - Mistress (1993)

LIANNE HALL - Fair Enough (2001)

PYE CORNER AUDIO - Electronic Rhythm Number Three (2010)

A LOVED ALBUM: Pop Will Eat Itself - This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! (1989)
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - The Fuses Have Been Lit
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - Not Now James, We’re Busy…

IN LOVING MEMORY: Derry Brownson
EMF - They’re Here (1992)

Saturday, 5 September 2026

LIST 270 - 05/09/2026

(Town Bike - Going Up the Country, Church House Inn, Congleton 14/06/2015. Picture is author's own)

Hello again,

Whisper it, but I don't believe I have any actual headlines for you this week! Certainly nothing which necessitates the usual sort of essay piece introduction, at least. I expect that might change once I've been to two gigs between the publication of today's and next week's Lists, however.

So permit me just to bullet point a few things (did I just use "bullet point" as a verb? That merits censure...) and not hold you up any longer. This week you might particularly like:

To start with, part of the soundtrack of your childhood Sunday afternoon televisual habits (not the Ski Sunday theme, I'll say in advance, though with the announcement of its cancellation just a few days ago it would have made for an appropriate inclusion itself).

New or recent fare from Haute & Freddy, Good News, Death Valley Girls, the (at least this time) very MBV-sounding DIIV, Hunter As A Horse (venomous snake-heavy official video not included) and Swansea Sound. On a superficial level, the last-named affords us the joy of witnessing Amelia Fletcher swearing at long-time collaborator and friend Hue Williams. On a more serious level, Mean to be Mean tackles head-on exactly the kind of vituperative abuse meted out to Sarah and Sarah-like bands by the music weeklies and monthlies a generation or two ago - we've already covered the sort at length on these pages this year. See also Jane Duffus's direct confrontation of serial offenders David Quantick and Simon Price in her These Things Happen: The Sarah Records Story. I'll leave you to decide how well they come out of it.

A further trio of jangly delights, comprising the 2024 reactivation of one of Rose Melberg's best-loved projects; the b-side of the first ever release on the superb Leicester indie Pickled Egg; and a cut from a lovely side project by Even As We Speak frontwoman Mary Wyer. Winners all.

A particularly fine b-side from Wire's short-lived, early 1990s Robert Gotobed-less period recording as Wir.

The furthest delve into the archives for a Straight In At feature to date, with two (out of only five all told) new entries in the hit parade from this very date in 1958. Both are of some historical significance; Rebel Rouser was the first UK chart entry of any description for Duane Eddy, whilst Volare by Domenico Modugno is both the only Eurovision Song Contest entry ever to win a Grammy and one of the all-time biggest selling tracks ever to have originated from it. Not bad considering it managed just third place on the night. Note also none of this releasing of Eurovision tracks commercially months in advance back then, the 1958 Contest having taken place in mid-March.

Some typically sprightly fun from Liverpool punk poppers and indiepop festival regulars Town Bike. The hastily-cleaned-up-for-a-family-audience version of Bastard Heart played at Going up the Country remains a fondly remembered live highlight, not least for all of us who knew what Sarah Maher would ordinarily have been singing.

Long before Peter Hook saw The Light or even Monaco, there was Revenge - or as an unattributed quote in the sleeve notes for volume nine of Indie Top 20 had it, "a load of brickies farting around with guitars and synthesizers they'd found, and that was the good bit". Ouch. Certainly this Mike Pickering and Graeme Park reinterpretation of a 1990 Revenge single captures and elevates the better parts of the project.

A classic cut from The Strokes' debut album in lieu of anything from the current long-player which, with the very best will in the world, I'm seriously struggling to warm to. PUT THE AUTOTUNE AWAY, JULIAN. It's killing one song after another.

One other small parish note - List #08 is the latest from the archives to have had its links repaired and formatting brought up to date. Among its highlights is a Then and Now for Sparks; though maybe it would be better rebranded as Then and Not Quite Now But Not Quite As Then As Then Either, given that List is more than seventeen years old now.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 03/09/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

ISN’T THAT…?
SOUND STAGE ORCHESTRA - Holy Mackerel (1976)

HAUTE & FREDDY - Touch Touch (2026)

THUNDERCAT – I Love Louis Cole (2020)

ALI FARKA TOURÉ & TOUMANI DIABATÉ – Kaira (2005)

WIR - Nice from Here (1991)

PET SNAKE - Getting Older (2024)

I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU
PET SHOP BOYS - Dancing Star (2024)

STRAIGHT IN AT… September 5th, 1958
DOMENICO MODUGNO - Volare (15)
DUANE EDDY AND THE REBELS - Rebel Rouser (26)

SWANSEA SOUND - Mean to be Mean (2026)

SPARKLEHORSE – Spirit Ditch (1995)

GOOD NEWS - Rise (2026)
(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

RICKY - Stop Knocking the Walls Down (2004)

WIR SIND DIE NEUEN GÖTTER
ANNE CLARK - Sleeper in Metropolis (1984)

RAPPING SONGS
BIZ MARKIE - Just a Friend (1989)

DEATH VALLEY GIRLS - Message from the Venus Flower (2026)

AIRPORT GIRL - Between Delta and Delaware (1998)

TOWN BIKE – Bad Girls (2007)

BETH GIBBONS - Floating on a Moment (2024)

TRICKY – You Don’t (1995)

A TANGLE OF JANGLE
THE SOFTIES - Go Back in Time (2024)
THE MELONS - Eskimo (1997)
HER NAME IN LIGHTS - She Said (2004)

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
REVENGE - Pineapple Face[‘s Big Day] (1990)

DIIV - The Fountain (2026)

STANDARD FARE - Married (2010)

WE’VE GOT A FUZZBOX AND WE’RE GONNA USE IT - Rules and Regulations (1986)

THE STROKES - Alone, Together (2001)

HUNTER AS A HORSE - Paradise Lost (2026)

IN LOVING MEMORY: Gary Dwyer
THE TEARDROP EXPLODES - Sleeping Gas (1979)

Saturday, 29 August 2026

LIST 269 - 29/08/2026

Hello again,

"Unable to get to any of the remaining gigs on their farewell tour, so, in common with likely many present tonight, for me The Spook School's Indietracks valedictory performance really was a goodbye.

A heartfelt thank you to one of the most important bands our little world has ever unearthed, tackling all matters transgender, gender binary, toxic masculinity, homophobia and so on unflinchingly, yet with a hugely relatable vulnerability".

The words I shared on Facebook back on July 27th, 2019, for what to this day remains tied equal as one of my favourite four or five gigs of all time. An emotionally charged, hopeful, angry, defiant, poignant, funny, life-affirming, vital set from a band which lived and breathed all of those attributes every day of its existence.

A few further gigs followed up to the first week of September that year, and that - save for the briefest of returns in 2023 to mark the tenth anniversary of their Dress Up debut - appeared to be that.

Until, with little to no warning, a quick "We're back" message appeared on their Facebook presence on Tuesday morning of this week.

It's stating the obvious that all of the issues which most exercised the Glasgow four-piece first time around are very much still prominent in the public discourse seven and a bit years on, if not more so.

In particular, interviews for Clashmusic and God is in the TV since the announced return have devoted attention to the ever more depressing trend to talk about trans rights around rather than with transgender people, and usually in pejorative, ignorant and judgmental terms.

With the hopes that the content of their older material would have become quaint and outdated by now clearly dashed, but acknowledging that they didn't especially want to play just the back catalogue if returning, the time was right for the band to take once more to the studio, and to come out swinging.

Hence Falling, the blast of energy also released into the wild on Tuesday just gone. As a statement of intent musically and lyrically, it does its job with rare aplomb, and the January release date of the parent album Like A Heartbeat already feels like the first genuine highlight of 2027 to which to look forward.

(The Spook School, The Red House, Sheffield 09/11/2013. Picture is author's own)

Some of you out there will have greeted the news of fresh Queens of the Stone Age product as rabidly enthusiastically as I that of The Spook School. I couldn't confess to that same level of fandom of the former, but the highs in a now thirty-year career under that name have been very high, and on a human interest level it's pleasing to read that frontperson Josh Homme's health issues - not limited to this decade's cancer diagnosis - appear to be past tense now.

Easy Street makes for a fascinating lead from forthcoming ninth studio album Perfecth [SIC], in so far as repeated listens to it still wouldn't necessarily pin it down stylistically as a QOTSA track.

I needed to hear it a fair few times on the radio before ceasing to misidentify it as something from among David Byrne's recent output, whereas that instrumental outro bears such a stark resemblance to the title track from Brian Eno's 1975 masterpiece Another Green World (also familiar to many of a certain age as the theme tune to BBC2's erstwhile arts strand Arena) that I couldn't not also include the last-named this week by way of a compare and contrast exercise.

***

On a sadder note, the number of artists requiring an In Loving Memory feature in a forthcoming List has gone through the roof in the past couple of weeks, with of course one very high profile candidate - perhaps the most high profile of all - newly added to the list of qualifiers mere days ago.

I'm not in the habit of rearranging the order in which I come to them according to fame, as we're all equals once we've passed away, so it'll be a few weeks before a Dolly Parton tribute appears. I think that's how this most selfless, saintly of human beings might have preferred it anyway.

As such, chronologically it's the turn of William Orbit to be commemorated this week. One of my two choices is an admittedly very, very obvious choice of an Orbit-helmed mega single from Madonna, and I make no apologies for that.

I'd argue that it's hard to overstate just how significant a creative fug Madonna had entered by the mid-1990s, certainly where her studio albums were concerned at least - anodyne, charmless ballads; dance-pop tracks often suffocated by floury production (some of the Nellee Hooper and Shep Pettibone examples have dated horribly); and writing collaborations with the likes of Björk which painted neither party in their absolute best light.

In terms of helping a high-profile but water-treading performer turn themselves inside out, Ray of Light - the album and the single - is right up there among the most successfully transformative examples of all time. I wouldn't be certain that all of Madonna's success which has followed for nigh on three decades since would have been guaranteed without this turning of the proverbial corner.

My other selection from Orbit's back catalogue was always going to be In the Realm of the Senses, the first track I'd ever heard by him and by extension by Bassomatic. I'm as certain as I can be that I have the late Annie Nightingale to thank for playing this.

I like its playfulness; a description of S-Express without any of the 70s/disco trappings but with more 90s smarts might be doing it a colossal disservice, but it was what came to mind at the time and largely still does now.

A few months later, the follow-up Fascinating Rhythm would go big, and a hitherto promising but commercially relatively unrewarded career would start to gain traction.

***

Heading the other way critically and commercially - and at speed - as Orbit's star started to rise were former post-punk seven-piece turned chart-topping trio (and later duo) Thompson Twins.

The wrong side of albums in 1987 and 1989 which had both tanked utterly, such was the antipathy towards their brand by the time of 1991's eighth and final studio album Queer (a title inspired by an Edith Sitwell ode rather than any grab for attention) that the white label club remixes of lead track Come Inside which preceded its release were issued under an alias - Feedback Max - instead.

Although those mixes - of which the longest of the House variants is included in this week's List - were highly acclaimed by club DJs, this move afforded them only the briefest of respite, most radio programmers immediately dropping all manifestations of the track (including the poppier single mix) like a bad penny upon Feedback Max's exposition as Thompson Twins.

Note "most". Bigger of heart than many, and still seemingly kindly disposed towards the band with his chart music hat on, Mark Goodier continued to play not only both the single and club versions of Come Inside on Radio 1's Evening Session, but also the two follow-ups (wherein the dance stylings of the Feedback Max experiment were pushed more to the fore on the actual radio singles).

It did little for Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie's fortunes, all three singles peaking between #53 at best and #85 at worst, and the only significant territory in which the Queer album charted at all was Australia, with the British release cancelled outright if I remember correctly.

All of which is far less than the project deserved; Come Inside in all of its incarnations is at the very least a perfectly serviceable track, and in its Feedback Max House form an absolute corker which I return to over and over even 35 years on.

I need hardly add; I don't believe there's a cat in hell's chance that any of the cooler, more cynical subsequent custodians of the Evening Session would ever have given it the time of day.

***

In what's been one of my favourite Lists to compile since the return at the start of the year (can you tell?), I'm also particularly pleased to include:

A Then and Now appearance by enduring surrealist psychedelic rock treasure Robyn Hitchcock. An "unmarketable" artist, as he put it himself during an interview with the New York Tribune's Evan Smith a few years back, he's nevertheless affording current album The Confuser a seemingly higher visual profile than has sometimes been the case, Yesterday's Rain clocking in as already the fourth track taken from it to gain an official video.

As promised and threatened a few weeks ago, a mid-1980s appearance by Michael Cretu in his own right, rather than as the producer of the likes of Hubert Kah or Inker & Hamilton.

The story of the pensioner I'd quite like to grow up to be in a decade and a half's time, as told with humour, beauty and dignity by the ceaselessly wonderful Gavin Osborn.

A promo by The Scaramanga Six which I must only have half-watched back in the day, as I'd never realised just how much it featured their then producer, the late and of course much-missed Tim Smith. In virtually the same week as members of the reactivated Cardiacs - specifically Mike Vennart on stage, Kavus Torabi on Facebook - made comments that could be interpreted as implying the recent live appearance at the ArcTanGent festival in Bristol might just be the band's last ever, it doesn't seem unreasonable to show their leader of the starry skies still in his prime. God, I miss him.

Something Tim may well have enjoyed, or at least directly or indirectly inspired, by Crush Fund. There's certainly the wide-eyed, skittish inventiveness and feel of 1980s Cardiacs about it. Another fine find courtesy of Sheffield Live's The Breakdown, or more accurately in this instance friend of the show Ralph Clay.

New releases from Beijing-via-Glasgow one man and a puppet punk entity The Burgers and Precious Recordings' Franco-Belgian indie pop and yé-yé purveyors Coup Dur, this ahead of their respective appearances in Sheffield on the 6th and 11th of September. I'd say I'm including them to help inform your decision on whether to go to see either, but in truth I already know that you should see both...

J xx

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xPROPAGANDA - Don’t (You Mess with Me) (2022)